Mixed Feelings Hinder Start
Of a U.K. Imperial Museum

BRISTOL, England -- Gareth Griffiths has been accumulating curios for a number of years, but he's still confounded by the yak saddle. And the elephant's-foot wastebasket.

"It's amazing what shows up here," says a puzzled Mr. Griffiths, director of the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum, as he examines a grass skirt and a spiked canvas helmet -- part of a haul of some 30,000 bits and pieces of a once-mighty realm. Most of...